


and i'm just getting started (the devil's got nothing on me)

by chemicalpixie



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Forced Prostitution, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-27 03:40:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15677295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chemicalpixie/pseuds/chemicalpixie
Summary: “she wears a dress that looks like liquid gold in the tribute parade, and the neckline is so low, she feels uncomfortable, but her stylist, a man named lux with a gold button-up and a white mustache curled at the ends says it will get them to look at her. cashmere doesn’t want to be looked at. she wants to be in the arena. she wants to win the games, wants to kill and maim and come home with her scars and she wants to be done with the games before they’ve even started.”or; cashmere thinks the only thing worse than surviving the hunger games is being forced to watch her brother survive them too.





	and i'm just getting started (the devil's got nothing on me)

**Author's Note:**

> anyway i started this fic in january and now it's here and it's 11k. whoops. also opalescence is so much fun to write bc she's a career victor who doesn't have the personality of a career naturally and i ended up going back and writing scenes in for her pre-cashmere's games just bc she was fun to write. also i tagged this as underage even tho it's only mentions of it just to be safe. 
> 
> the title of this fic is a modified lyric from “beekeeper” by keaton henson, which i first heard on the singular cashmere playlist on 8tracks. shoutout to you, person on 8tracks who made that. anyway! please kudos and comment if you enjoyed this fic, it means a lot to me.

cashmere volunteers for the games at age sixteen. she does it for her brother, who she can hear crying through the academy’s walls at night, and _one_ of them has to go into the arena or they might as well have never been born. gloss never wanted to kill anyone (he told her this quietly, one night when they were up late, sparring still because neither wanted to give in and admit their exhaustion. she was so surprised he would even say such a thing aloud — everyone knew the academy was covered in cameras — that he landed a punch straight to her face and she had a black eye for a week). cashmere always thought she wouldn’t go into the games, that it would be her brother and that she would finish the academy out and go into the military, or something, like every tribute reject did, unless they got injured in a way that couldn’t be fixed (gloss was the one who displayed the real vigor — she’d been told many times that he fought like it was the only thing that kept him alive, and she? she just looks haughty, and the capital wants a good show, not a tribute that dies with a smug expression on her face) but she’s always been stronger than he has, and so once he says it, once he _admits_ the games are not for him (at first, she’d thought it simply a moment of weakness, a moment where he had doubts, and she’d tried to tell him so, tried to tell him he fought like he was born for the games, but he’d burst into tears) and so it has to be her. when she volunteers, gloss cheers harder for her than anyone else. 

//

she meets her mentor the day of the reaping. she has blonde hair that is so pale it looks almost white in the right light and pale skin. she wears a lace and pastel blue number that cashmere hates almost on principle, but despite how terrible her outfit looks, cashmere recognizes her immediately. it’s opalescence, the girl who won at sixteen in a mossy, rock-filled forest and beat her last opponent by clawing his eyes and throat out. 

she’s quieter than cashmere expected; doesn’t say a word to her until they’re halfway to the capitol.

“why’d you volunteer?” opalescence asks, her voice soft. her voice is calming, and cashmere suddenly doesn’t feel quite so on edge. cashmere pauses before answering, and in that time, opalescence says, “be honest.” her voice is still calming, but now it has a sharp edge to it.

cashmere swallows. “my brother. he didn’t want to go into the games. so i did.”

“older or younger?” 

“twins. he’s older by two minutes.”

opalescence nods, as though making a note of this. “what weapons are you best with?”

“throwing knives. good with knives in hand-to-hand as well.” cashmere tosses her hair over her shoulder as she says this. she’s number one in her academy.

“don’t get cocky,” opalescence scolds, but there’s a bit of a softer aspect to it. it feels like more of a reminder. there’s something about her that is so delicate that cashmere wonders if this is the same woman who tore out a boy’s eyes with her nails eleven years ago.

“i’m not cocky,” she says. “it’s honest. i’m the best in my class at the academy.” cashmere blinks then, as she hears something whizzing by her ear, and when she turns her head there’s a throwing knife embedded in the wall next to her ear. opalescence turns to look at her, a fierce look on her face. 

“no matter how good you are, there’s always someone who’s better. i won’t say this again. don’t get cocky.”

//

her district partner is a seventeen-year old boy named garnet. her career pack (because she is a career, it was decided from the start, she was always going to be) is herself and garnet, who uses a sword, a girl named dahlia from district two who has short black hair that looks almost blue in the right light and uses a machete, and her district partner calix, who uses a crossbow, a boy from district four named oisin who is a huge bulk of muscle and leans towards a fishing knife for fights, and a girl from district ten named bekah who worked in a slaughterhouse with dark skin and ash-blonde hair. she is muscular and two inches taller than cashmere. two has gone for lithe and nimble, and district one has gone for sexy, and so bekah dwarfs them both. districts four and ten are the unspoken, almost career districts. while they don’t train careers, they make sure that no one goes into the arena unprepared (much of this comes from their occupations. you do not go through slaughterhouses and work on fishing boats and not come face-to-face with death). 

//

she wears a dress that looks like liquid gold in the tribute parade, and the neckline is so low, she feels uncomfortable, but her stylist, a man named lux with a gold button-up and a white mustache curled at the ends says it will get them to look at her. cashmere doesn’t want to be looked at. she wants to be in the arena. she wants to win the games, wants to kill and maim and come home with her scars and she wants to be done with the games before they’ve even started. 

//

they watch the training scores together, her and opalescence and garnet and garnet’s mentor, marble. cashmere is wearing an oversized sweater of her namesake, grey and soft and warm. her legs are tucked under her, and opalescence has forced another cup of tea on her. opalescence, cashmere has learned, is very into tea. cashmere drinks it, because she’s sixteen and a tribute and when you’re a tribute who comes from one or two and you’ve trained all your life to be in these games you do what your mentor tells you, but privately she thinks it tastes like dirt. 

her training score is a nine, which pisses her off, because she knows she did well enough for a ten, but apparently the gamemakers didn’t think so. but she won’t let it affect her. she’ll go into the arena and she’ll kill everyone in it. 

she slams the door to her room so hard that the empty mug on her dresser rattles, and she can hear opalescence’s voice from outside the door. 

“cashmere, darling,” she says, half-scolding, half-concern. “what exactly are you upset about?”

cashmere is screaming into her pillow to keep it muffled because she’s never good enough she’s never good enough she wishes that her brother was going into these fucking games she’s going to strangle him herself if she makes it out and — 

— and that’s exactly the minute that the door swings open. opalescence is standing there, a bent hairpin in her hand, and there’s fire in her eyes. she storms over to cashmere, and grabs her by the hair, pulling her up so cashmere is eye level with her.

“you do not get to throw a fit about scoring a nine in training, do you understand me?” opalescence says, and cashmere is squirming and struggling against her grip and her scalp hurts, dammit, but opalescence doesn’t let her go. “you scored a nine. i picked you because i thought you could handle this, not because i saw you as the kind of child who takes their toys home because everyone isn’t playing exactly the way they want them to.” opalescence drops her then, and cashmere is pretty sure she’ll have that bruise on her ass for a week, and then opalescence crouches down and hisses, “the arena is not going to follow your rules, cashmere, so if you don’t suck it up and play their game, you’ll end up dead. do you understand me?” cashmere wants to wince away from her gaze, and tries to look away, but opalescence’s hand shoots out lightning fast and grabs her chin, forcing her to look forward. her nails dig into cashmere’s skin, and cashmere whimpers. “do you understand me?” opalescence says again, more seriously this time. she’s not yelling, but that’s what makes it scarier. it’s a controlled whisper.

“yes,” cashmere says. “i understand.”

opalescence stands up. “good,” she says, and she turns to leave, adding, “get some rest. big day tomorrow,” as she goes. cashmere just watches her go. she can see her now, the girl who ripped a boy’s eyes and throat out with her nails. she’s not sure if she’s glad she knows where that girl went or if she regrets finding out.

//

she is raised up into the arena, and as cashmere looks around, she can see the arena is a swamp, with small islets, most of which have huge green-leaved trees in the center. there is some kind of moss or algae growing on the water, and cashmere shudders to think what might hide under it. the cornucopia is on the largest of these small islets, and there’s a solid ring of land around it, with enough room for fighting. the cornucopia is solid gold, and in it, cashmere can see glimmering weapons, and the moment the gong goes off, she is running, jumping, from islet to islet, and once she reaches the cornucopia she can see that jumping from islet to islet was the wiser choice, because while the water is barely waist-deep, there is something about the algae that seems to burn the tributes it touches (one of which is oisin, who wasn’t nimble enough to jump from from islet to islet) and cashmere wants to stare as they melt, but forces her eyes away instead. she finds a set of throwing knifes among the weapons, and the bloodbath begins, and dahlia is behind her, and she beheads tributes and blood splatters onto cashmere’s clothes as they fight, and then, in the blink of an eye, it is over, the bloodbath is over and the cannon booms, once, twice, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve and the careers are left standing alone among the corpses. the heavy iron scent of blood is thick in the air, and cashmere resists the urge to vomit, and instead goes over to the cornucopia and they raid it for supplies, putting supplies in their bags. the way this swamp looks, they’ll be spending days at a time in it, unable to get back to the cornucopia, so it is better to take what they need now. 

//

they spend their days trying to hunt and their nights keeping watch on the larger islets that they can find. there aren’t many, and cashmere thinks about pushing her fellow careers into the water and watching them burn and dissolve in the acidic algae, but doesn’t. she needs them around, if she is going to win. with this challenging arena, it would be easy for her to slip, to fall into the algae filled water, and for the winner to be a phantom victor (so named because they won their games by hiding and waiting until all the other tributes had killed each other off) and cashmere did not work this hard, did not sacrifice everything to _lose_. 

but as they hunt one day (they’ve only killed two tributes and they’re getting desperate, even though they know the arena has killed another three), cashmere jumps onto an empty islet, one without a tree in the center, which she thinks is a bit odd, because most of the ones they’ve seen, even the bigger ones, have had a tree, and then the ground collapses from underneath her, and she’s falling and it’s over and she’s dead and — 

— and she lands hard on her ass. she sighs. the bruise opalescence left her with before the games had just gone away, too, she thinks, and then she notices there’s some kind of creature in the pit she’s in with her, and it makes a deep rumbling noise, almost a purring, that cashmere thinks is almost relaxing until her instincts snap into place and she realizes it’s coming for her. she scrambles for her pack, throws a knife at it, and it bounces off the creature’s deep golden hide, and she curses, scrambles up into a crouch and watches it. it moves on eight legs, and looks almost like the house spiders she used to kill when gloss was too scared to do it, aside from the golden armor it seems to sport on the top half of its body. it purrs again, and charges at her, and she waits until the last second and drops, flat against the ground. there’s no armor on its underbelly, she reasons, and she can kill it. its fangs drip a clear liquid, and it drips onto cashmere’s arm and _burns_ , and she stabs it in the abdomen, and slices, pulling her knife down, and its sickly-yellow guts spill out onto her, and it makes a noise almost like a deflating balloon, and collapses, and cashmere pushes the corpse off of her, and yells in triumph for her fellow careers to send down a rope. nothing happens. she waits another long beat and yells again, but even as she yells, she knows — they have abandoned her and left her for dead. 

she presses her palm to the wall of the pit, and it’s moist, and so she knows she needs a running start. she backs up as much as she can, and runs, leaping at the wall and stabbing her knives into it. they start to sink lower even as she does this, but she quickly uses them to climb out of the pit before standing triumphant on the edge of the islet. her fellow careers are nowhere in sight. she frowns. they will pay for leaving her for dead. 

//

she has to act quickly, this she knows, because once night comes and they project the dead in the sky, her fellow careers will know she’s still alive and she will lose the element of surprise. she tracks them to a larger islet where they’ve made camp, leaving icky-sticky bits of spider mutt guts behind her, and dusk is falling and she’s losing light and she can see bekah’s back, and as soon as she’s close enough (one islet jump over), she hurls a knife at the base of bekah’s spine, where her skull meets her neck and bekah keels over, and a cannon booms, and the rest of the career pack is scrambling to their feet, and cashmere hurls another knife, and it hits garnet in the arm, and he leaps towards the islet she’s on but he slips, and falls backwards into the water, screaming as the algae burns his flesh, and by the time cashmere has made it to the islet the others are on, calix has dahlia’s machete in his heart, and two more cannons have boomed. when she lands, a spike of pain shoots through her ankle. she must have landed wrong, but she'll worry about that after she wins the games.

cashmere leaps on dahlia, pinning her to the ground, because she might not be much but she is bigger than dahlia, and if she straddles the other girl and keeps her pinned, dahlia can't fight, she can't get her machete and she can't kill cashmere, and dahlia pleads. 

“please, cashmere, please, please. i didn’t want to leave you, i knew you could make it, we could do it, we could do it together, please don’t kill me, i killed calix for you, cashmere, please,” she begs, and cashmere can see what she thinks might be tears roll down her cheeks, and cashmere raises her knife.

“thanks,” she says, and brings the knife down into dahlia’s heart. the cannon booms again, and cashmere pushes the corpses into the swamp, and the silence echos. there’s no announcer telling her she’s won, no hovercraft coming to take her away, to fix her acid-burned left arm, and when the dead flash in the sky, cashmere sees her fellow careers, and the district nine boy. cashmere does the math on her fingers, and she realizes — there’s one more person in this arena with her. the district eleven girl, a fifteen year old who looked like she was ten, who they’d all pinned as weak, bloodbath fodder — she must have escaped the bloodbath, climbed into the trees, and now she’s out of sight somewhere, hiding in the branches of these trees, waiting for cashmere to slip up so she can win. 

“fuck that,” cashmere screams, and means it. she didn’t come all the way to let some little ghost of a girl beat her to the title of victor. “fuck you, you little bitch! i will find you, and i will kill you. do you fucking hear me? do you hear me?” she screams, loud as she can. she raids the fellow career’s packs and finds a flashlight, and she shines it as far as she can, but she can’t see much. either the girl isn’t here, or she’s much higher up, and cashmere would be willing to take her bets that she wasn’t here. 

she hops from islet to islet, trying to be careful to not land on her ankle, to not land wrong, shining her flashlight into the trees, and she pauses on one, for a moment, after she hears a rustling, and throws a knife up into the trees, and she hears a quiet muttering, and she knows she has her, and she can hear the other girl jump into another tree, and cashmere follows, because she can't climb, not with her ankle, she doesn't want to risk falling into the algae. 

so they keep doing this, keep jumping and following and jumping and following, and cashmere’s ankle is shooting pain up her leg now, she thinks she heard something crack, and then something emerges from the river. they’re grey-brown, and they have claws and the water seems to bead on their fur as though they were aquatic. they make some kind of chittering noise, and it’s obvious to cashmere that they will consume her if she lets them, and so she scrambles up into the tree, and she’s sitting next to the bleeding district eleven girl (who is dripping blood all over these mutts and they’re lapping it up, doesn't the dumb bitch have some kind of bandage) and cashmere secures her grip and pushes the other girl. she falls, open-mouthed and gaping — and then cashmere feels a jerk on her ankle, and she realizes the girl has a hold on her ankle. her hurt ankle. cashmere thinks for a long second and kicks, hard, and the girl falls into the mess of creatures, and cashmere waits, for a long moment, the longest seconds of her life, and then there’s the cannon — 

— and then the announcer goes “the winner of the sixty-third hunger games, cashmere!” and something deep in cashmere she didn’t know was tensed relaxes, because she’s finally done it. she's won. she's a victor, and gloss will never have to go into the games. 

//

cashmere wakes in her hospital room, where they've treated her arm and her ankle and she feels new again. she is kind of new again, she guesses, because they gave her breast implants, too, while they were at it.

opalescence is sitting by the side of cashmere's bed, stroking her hair. cashmere can feel her long nails on her scalp. she wonders why she keeps them so long. her chest is sore, and something in her suspects that opalescence may not have had a choice. 

“it's okay, baby girl,” opalescence says. “you did it. you won.” tears form inexplicably in cashmere's eyes because she thinks this moment is the closest she's ever been to having anything resembling a mother. 

//

“the winner of the sixty-third hunger games, cashmere fellona!” caesar says, as cashmere walks on stage. he has sea-green hair this year, the color of the algae in her games, and cashmere shivers a little bit. she tries not to think about how she watched garnet and oisin die in that acid algae. the lights onstage are bright and cashmere can see the crowd smile and applaud but somehow she feels nothing at all. 

“so let's watch a recap of the games!” caesar says brightly, and then turns on a video of the games. cashmere watches herself kill and tries not to remember the way it felt when she drove a knife into dahlia’s heart. after the video is over, caesar turns to her. “can you tell us what the most exciting part of the games was? for you, for you,” he adds, laughing. “because for us it was probably watching you ambush your fellow careers.”

“well, i certainly thought that was exciting, caesar,” cashmere says. she’s lying. she didn’t think anything that happened in the games was exciting. terrifying, maybe. sure, she’d trained, but training still didn’t prepare her for the games, not in the way that really mattered. “but the most exciting part was probably when i killed that spider mutt. i thought i was going to die right there.”

“but you didn't, did you?” caesar laughs. “and now you're here with us today.”

“i sure am,” cashmere purrs. she’s showing off for the camera. 

“can i ask,” caesar's voice drops to a conspiratorial whisper, “what was going through your head when you killed dahlia? i mean, we were all waiting to see what you would do!”

“well i was thinking that even if i spared her, only one of us could win,” cashmere says. “and i wanted that one to be me.” she’s not lying, not really. 

“ooh,” caesar says. “i love that determination! so fierce,” he laughs, and then pauses for a moment, contemplative look on his face. 

“your final opponent was mint hadley from eleven. dare i ask if you underestimated her?” oh. so that was her name, cashmere thinks. mint. she thinks back to the district eleven girl. she thinks it suits her. her mind shows her flashes of the district eleven — mint, she thinks to herself. that’s her name — being eaten by those mutts. their tiny sharp teeth that tore her apart. 

“i think i did,” cashmere says. “i didn't expect her to make it past the bloodbath, let alone to be my final opponent. but i think it turned out alright,” she adds, laughing. she feels a tiny bad for laughing about the death of a girl who never had a chance, but she keeps laughing anyway, because that’s what they want her to do. 

“i must agree!” caesar booms. “well, folks, that does seem to be all the time we have, so let's all give a warm round of applause for cashmere fellona of district one!” the people cheer, and cashmere curtsies, and cashmere tries not to think about the knife she buried in dahlia's heart or the way she kicked mint down to the carnivorous mutts to be here.

//

she spends most of the months in between her win and the victory tour drugged. she doesn’t need the drugs, not really, but it’s nice to not feel anything.

//

her victory tour is what she expected, nothing special, it’s just her and the stylist and the escort and opalescence, and she looks at the eyes of the families of the people she killed, of the district eleven girl’s mother and brothers and sister, and she feels a little bit of remorse, but really, the district eleven didn't _deserve_ that victor crown. she didn't train for it. it's cashmere’s, damnit. she spent her entire life training for that victor’s crown. 

but when she looks into the eyes of the people of two, something in her splinters a little bit and breaks. she can see dahlia’s parents and she feels an ache inside her somewhere that she doesn't know if she'll ever be able to soothe, because dahlia was begging and pleading but honestly she never had a chance, not with cashmere on top of her. cashmere wonders if dahlia would have won if the spider mutt had killed her. she tries not to think about it. 

and she sees hatred and envy in the eyes of every other citizen of two, and of three, and four, and all the other districts besides, and it’s good she got used to the envy and hate in people’s eyes at the academy because otherwise she'd break down crying after every district. but cashmere is a district one. she's stronger than that. 

she breaks down sobbing after district two, because dahlia would’ve won if it hadn’t been her. there’s something inside her that's sure of it, and opalescence strokes her hair as cashmere weeps and cashmere pretends she’s small again and hasn’t killed anyone and opalescence is her mother.

//

when she gets home from the victory tour she finds out gloss is expected to be next year’s male tribute. 

she throws a vase at the wall and collapses into sobs. 

//

she's not allowed to be his mentor, but she is allowed to be in the capitol. she knows what victors do, of course she does. she's a district one and they put her in training at age thirteen and made her kiss one of the trainers until she could kiss in a way that shows off for the camera. she knows what victors do. 

she’ll fuck every sponsor who sends gloss a gift. she’ll make sure he makes it out. she doesn’t know which is worse — gloss dying in the games, or him making it out, but she'll do everything in her power to make sure he has the choice. 

//

gloss’s district partner is a petite honey-blonde girl named ambrosia. she blows a kiss at the camera after the reaping, her hand clutched in gloss’s as though he’s her anchor to the world. cashmere privately thinks that she'll die pretty, a splash of blood on her golden hair as the cameras linger a little too long on her body so that the capitol men who get off to that kind of shit have time to cum. 

she wonders if cameras lingered on dahlia a little too long too. she's not sure if she wants to know. 

//

cashmere watches the other reaping ceremonies while gloss rides the train from one to the capitol. luster and allura won't be showing them their competition, not yet. they'll show the competition after the parade, so they can focus on looking pretty during the parade and attracting sponsors. not that looking pretty and attracting sponsors is exactly hard for them. they’re district ones.

two has a boy named lucius who looks quarry-born, and though the academy bulked him up, he still has the quarry-born look about him. the girl from two is tall with dark blonde hair, a contrast from the typical appearance of district two girls. her name is aurelia, which is a more ornamented name than district two usually allows their tributes. everything about her is different than the usual two girl, and if cashmere didn't know better, she'd think she was a one. she's one to watch out for, cashmere thinks, and then she wonders. how many of the mentors last year sat here and thought the exact same thing about her? she retches a little, and then she realizes. she's met dahlia's mentor. at the victor's dinner, in two. lyme, her name was. cashmere retches again, and then skips to the next reaping.

four has a pair of seventeen-year-old twins, both with curly red hair. the girl smiles like she has a knife between her teeth. mollie and marlin are their names, and he volunteered because she was reaped. cashmere thinks they'll be favorites for sure, especially with the sob story mags and briony are sure to pull out of their ass. she tries not think about how that could have been her and gloss, in another year. in another world. she pushes that thought aside as she makes a mental note to remind gloss to watch out for them, especially the girl. the boy's red hair and glistening muscles remind her of oisin, and cashmere flicks the tv to the next reaping and tries not to remember the way oisin screamed as he died. 

ten has a wispy thin girl, only thirteen, and cashmere will eat her own words if she makes it past the bloodbath. the boy is tall and lean, but the way he stands makes cashmere think there might be more muscle to him that it appears. he could be a threat, she thinks, and flips channels again.

the slaughterhouse districts - three and five and six and seven and eight and nine and eleven and twelve - have nothing to show for themselves, as usual. no surprises there.

//

the girl from two and the girl from four get into a fight on day one of training. all eyes are on them as aurelia rips at mollie’s hair. it takes three avoxes to pull them apart. cashmere looks at the nasty gash on aurelia’s shoulder over the choppy cam footage from the training center and tries not to imagine what kind of knife would make that wound.

gloss and ambrosia stand on the sidelines, watching. she's leaning into his shoulder as they watch the two duke it out. cashmere thinks that the two of them are unusually close. she doesn't mention it.

//

that evening, allura kicks her out of one’s apartment. “go with luster,” she says. “you need to have some fun. forget your brother’s going into the games for a minute.” cashmere starts to protest that, because _of course_ she can’t just forget gloss is going into the games, but allura slams the door shut in her face. she looks at luster. 

“don’t you have mentoring duties to attend to?” she asks, sulkily. luster smiles, and cashmere suddenly understands why they call it “the smile that won the games”. it got him sponsors. sure, sponsors who wanted to fuck him afterward, but sponsors nonetheless, and that got him a win.

“nope,” he says. “‘lura gave me the night off. besides, tomorrow’s more training. they’ve been training their whole lives. what else can i teach them?”

“fair enough,” cashmere grumbles. they walk in silence for a moment, before cashmere pipes up and asks, “where’re we going?”

“somewhere fun,” luster says with a wink. he adjusts his jacket. the two of them keep their head down. neither of them want to get recognized right now. cashmere thinks she might punch the next sleazy old man who asks her for an autograph, and who knows what they’d do to gloss then. 

cashmere rolls her eyes. “yeah, right,” she says. luster stops suddenly, in the middle of the street, and pulls open a small wooden door. if luster hadn’t stopped her, cashmere wouldn’t have even noticed it. 

“ladies first,” luster says, with an elaborate hand gesture. cashmere enters, and heads down a set of small stairs. at the bottom, she sees a room lined entirely with dark brown wood, with golden chandeliers in the ceiling and a bar against one wall. the bartender wears a fur-lined coat and top hat, and is currently pouring whiskey from the bottle. cashmere can see that there are only a few people in the bar, all of whom she recognizes. there’s marble, the winner of the twentieth hunger games, still with the shock of white hair his stylists gave him to help him stand out, and valor, the winner of the thirty-first hunger games, and sapphire, the winner of the thirty-third, blue-black hair shimmering in the light as she bats her heavy-lidded eyes at valor. she’s seated on his lap, but he’s flirting with the bartender, all smiles and winks. there’s glory, golden hair and eyes still unchanged, even though by cashmere’s math she must be nearing forty-five. there’s quartz, winner of the forty-first, and opalescence. all district one victors. and then there’s a man with a shock of dark hair sitting on the end, next to opalescence. cashmere takes a seat beside him, and luster joins her. it takes her a moment to place the dark haired man, but eventually she does, realizing he’s the sole living victor of district twelve — haymitch abernathy.

she crosses her arms and orders the first fancy drink that catches her eye. she’s never been one for the burn of liquor. “what’s he doing here? didn’t he cheat and kill velvet with that bullshit axe trick?” she asks opalescence. sure, haymitch’s games were long before her, but the academy has them watch old games for mistakes. to show them what they can do better. to show them what will get them killed. she remembers velvet, because she was so sure she’d win. she had haymitch cornered, on that cliff edge, with her axe, and then — and then the axe came flying back at her and their trainers turned the tv off and didn’t even ask any questions about what velvet did wrong.

before opalescence can answer, through, quartz chimes in. “he hasn’t got anyone else to keep him from drinking himself to death at home, so the rest of us districts just pass him around,” he says, holding up some kind of fizzing blue drink. his words are slurred, and cashmere is fairly sure he’s drunk. opalescence has only a small, gold-rimmed teacup in front of her. 

“i resent that,” haymitch says, but before he can get another word out, luster interrupts. 

“hey, opal!” he yells. “aren’t you gonna drink something stronger than your plant water?”

opalescence takes another sip of her tea before replying. “when you’ve got a virgin victor next year, lu, remind me to ask you the same question.”

“i’m not a virgin,” cashmere protests. this is true. just last week, snow had sent her to fuck a man who’d wanted her to pretend that he’d overpowered her. she had to try and not be sick right then and there when he’d asked. she hasn’t been a virgin since the night after the party at the presidential palace on her victory tour. she wonders how much extra her virginity cost. 

“yeah, you are,” haymitch says. “you’re a games virgin until a new victor shows up. that’s when you get to be well-adjusted.”

“more like have to be,” glory chimes in, tone a bit dark. cashmere can see quartz put a steadying hand on her arm. the bartender slides something across the bar towards cashmere, and she takes a tentative sip. it tastes like raspberries, with the slight burn of liquor. she decides she likes it. 

cashmere shoots haymitch a glare. she doesn’t like cheaters, and now he’s trying to be all friendly with her and her district-mates? acting like he didn’t kill one of them? haymitch glares right back. 

“sorry, sweetie,” he says with a tight-lipped smile. “you learn leave all games-related resentments behind. if i resented every victor who’d killed a tribute from twelve, i wouldn’t have any friends. what’s your name again, anyway? chantilly? you killed both my kids in the bloodbath, so you can’t glare at me.”

“cashmere,” cashmere says, crossing her arms again. she doesn’t mention that chantilly was her and gloss’s older sister who died in the arena three years ago. haymitch’s brow furrows, and he looks like he wants to say something, but before he can, there’s a shout from the other end of the bar.

“if we didn’t leave games-related shit behind, we’d all be dead!” shouts sapphire, leaning towards cashmere’s side of the bar.

“cheers to that!” valor yells, and everyone clinks their drinks together and then takes another drink. cashmere follows suit, and smiles, and says nothing.

//

cashmere fucks sponsors to keep gloss alive (she keeps count. not because she expects gloss to pay her back — god, no, never, but rather she wants to know exactly how much her brother’s life is worth. all in all, it’s six quick fucks with sponsors that keep him alive).

//

the arena gloss finds himself in is full of sand the color of sunset, with dry grass and brush and red-rocked cliffs shooting up from the ground like trees. there aren’t many places to hide, not that cashmere can see, and she thinks that her games must have been slow. not enough bloody deaths. too many tributes falling prey to that acid algae.

gloss and ambrosia are across the arena from each other, but the second the cannon booms, they’re running to the cornucopia. gloss grabs a knife and tosses ambrosia a sword, and the two of them work beautifully together. cashmere watches them move almost in rhythm, as they slaughter the girl from nine and the boy from ten. mollie has a set of throwing knives, and she hurls them at the girl from district three as her brother smashes the girl from district eleven’s head in against one of the red rocks. lucius snaps the tribute boy from nine’s neck, and aurelia brandishes a mace that she uses to smash the boy from district three’s head in. the bloodbath ends with blood puddling in the sunset-orange sand, and there are only ten tributes left. 

cashmere holds her breath. she knows the the career pack will end early.

//

there is no water in the arena. the cornucopia has a few bottles of water, but not much. by the morning of the second day, the careers are already squabbling. they have other tributes to hunt, but this arena isn’t very big, or so it seems (the girl from district twelve had found an extensive tunnel system with lakes and rivers before falling into one of the lakes and drowning. cashmere thinks it’s ironic that they are dying without water, and dying with it).

//

on the third day, at noon, the careers have long since run out of water. and then it starts to rain. cashmere can see the careers tilt their heads up for water, as the girl from eight and the boy from six do the same. it takes a moment for them to realize that this water isn’t rain — it’s blood. they’re on their knees in an instant, trying to the get the stuff out of their mouths, and it’s then, as the blood rain falls, that the aurelia gets mauled by rabbit mutts. 

when the rain clears up, more than twenty minutes later, they can’t tell what blood was hers, and what was the rain.

//

on the fourth day, the cameras show gloss and ambrosia making plans to get away from the pack that night, when everyone else is sleeping. 

they don’t make it. gloss, exhausted from guard and the adrenaline, falls asleep, and when he wakes, mollie is on top of ambrosia, and ambrosia is gasping for breath. gloss scrambles to his feet, but there’s no weapons anywhere near him, and soon enough, marlin has one of his knives against gloss’s throat. “don’t even try it,” he says, pinning gloss against one of the red rocks they’d been sleeping under. “your girl was weak. she had to go.”

“can’t waste water on weaklings like her,” lucius chuckles. mollie hops off ambrosia, kicking the body as the cannon goes off. 

“she’s dead,” she says, and gloss wails. 

cashmere doesn’t know why they don’t just kill him there. he’s easily outnumbered. but after a moment, gloss straightens up. there’s something cool and detached in his tone as he says, “you were right. she was weak.”

//

on the fifth day, the four remaining careers split off into pairs to hunt for the two remaining non-careers. marlin and lucius, and mollie and gloss. marlin leads lucius down into a cave, where they find the body of the district eight girl. “must have died of starvation,” marlin says, nudging the body with his toe. “we must’ve missed the cannon.” there’s something calm and calculated in the way that he says they must have missed the cannon, and lucius cocks his head like a dog hearing the distant call of its master in his confusion.

and the next moment, marlin leaps at lucius, pinning him flat against the cave floor. the two of them scrabble and tussle and try to push the other off, and cashmere bites her lip and tries not to think about the many ways that gloss could be dying. 

and in the end, it’s marlin who ends up with his head smashed against the cave floor, leaking blood that’s almost the same shade as the rock. lucius struggles to stand, and dusts his hands off, and the camera cuts back to mollie and gloss. 

it’s become obvious now that the pretense of killing the other two tributes was a trap. marlin and mollie are clever. they must have killed the other two tributes in the early morning, when one of them was on guard. they’re fighting now, and he’s larger, he’s got that going for him, but mollie is quicker. she darts around him like a fish, getting in quick nicks and cuts with her knife that only seem to enrage him. gloss has his sword, a nasty-looking spined thing, designed to cut as many ways on its way out as it does on its way in. as she rips her knife across his chest, the camera cuts back to lucius, deeper in the caves now, falling into a pool of water as rabid bats tear off his flesh. 

when the cameras cut back to mollie and gloss, he’s got her pinned on the ground as she struggles and weeps. his expression doesn’t change as he rips his sword down her torso and her guts begin to spill onto the ground. she cries out with agony, but gloss doesn’t get off her. instead, he tosses his sword away and whispers into her ear, “that was for ambrosia.”

//

the night after his victor’s crowning ceremony, gloss tells her, sobbing, that he thinks he loved ambrosia.

cashmere thinks that she has never loved anyone.

//

even years out of the games, most victors are armed. cashmere knows this. she doesn't feel quite safe unless she has a knife or three strapped inside her bra or on her thigh. gloss learns this the hard way.

after his interview with caesar, he sees briony backstage and his face twists with anger. “you!” he screams. “your girl killed ambrosia!” briony says nothing, but when gloss lunges at her, she pulls a fishing knife out of her boot and holds it at his throat.

“i told her to,” she snaps, before adding, “threaten me again, boy, she hisses, and i'll make sure it's the last thing you ever do.” gloss's face twists with rage and in a moment he's on top of briony and she's on the floor and he's choking her. cashmere is frozen, she doesn't know what to do and somehow all she can hear is the clatter of the knife away from briony's hand and remember the feel of her body on top of dahlia's right before she killed her.

and then cashmere can see mags hurrying over, and she relaxes. as one of the eldest victors still around, mags is respected by all victors, no matter the district or age. she coughs slightly, and brutus, who is here because lucius made it to the final four and caesar probably wants to discuss an interview with him or something (cashmere doesn't know and doesn't really frankly give a damn), moves in and pulls gloss off briony. briony is spitting curse words that even cashmere hasn’t heard before and there's something animalistic in her face.

“calm down, the both of you,” mags scolds. she turns to briony, and says, in a calm tone, “go back to the apartment. calm down. you should know better than to rise to taunts from virgin victors. i'll deal with you later.” she pauses for a moment, and then turns to gloss. he's calmed down, and the rage on his face is more of a simmer and less of a boil, but cashmere can tell he's still angry. 

“gloss, what happened in the games happened. there's nothing none of us can do about it now, and it's a waste of time to go on threatening each other because of what someone’s girl did someone else’s girl in the games. you won, you’re here, and there’s nothing any of us can do to change that. do you understand me?”

gloss nods, but the expression on his face doesn't change. brutus lets go of his arms, and gloss stiffens, walking away. cashmere follows him all the way back to the district one apartment. when they're back, gloss turns on her.

“why didn't you stand up for me?” he yells, but the expression on his face is more sadness than anger.

cashmere blanches. she hadn't expected him to turn on her. “it’s mags,” she says, confused. “we all respect mags. she’s one of the victors i respect most, after opalescence.”

“bullshit,” gloss spits. “she’s not a one! there's no reason she should be able to tell me what to do.”

cashmere hears something from the kitchen, and turns to find her mentor in a white nightgown and socks. she's holding a mug of tea and looks about the least threatening cashmere has ever seen her. which, she thinks, is saying something, considering the hideous lace and blue number she was wearing when cashmere met her. her brows are furrowed, and she places a hand on cashmere's shoulder.

“your sister is right, gloss,” she says. “we all respect mags. she's got a tremendous amount of sway with the capitol, and she's brought home almost all the victors four has. it won't make you any friends to disrespect her.”

“what do you know?” gloss snarls. the look on his face is startling anger, something cashmere's never seen on him before, not even in the games. it makes him look younger than the seventeen years old he is. “you're just a capitol doll, all dressed up in ribbons and lace. bet they rigged your games to give you a win.” cashmere gasps. opalescence's face turns to stone. 

rigging games is something that happens occasionally. when the people really want someone to win, the gamemakers let it happen. sending nasty mutts after the other leading tributes, a surprise earthquake or acid rainstorm, anything that lets the people’s favorite win. it's almost offensive in districts like cashmere’s to say that your game was rigged. in districts where you worked almost all of your life for the title of victor.

opalescence's face twists almost imperceptibly. before cashmere can realize she's moved, she's moved, and sent a throwing knife flying at gloss. it lands in his left shoulder. it's nowhere that will kill him, or even affect his throw, but it will give him a nasty scar. opalescence turns away, apparently satisfied with the results of the encounter, and cashmere follows her to the couch, where they watch shitty capitol tv until cashmere falls asleep with her head in opalescence's lap.

//

she's awoken later by the door opening. she cracks open one eye to see luster coming in the front door. he walks purposefully towards opalescence. “they’re saying you put a knife in my boy,” he says. his voice is low. he's probably trying to let her sleep. she’s already awake, but cashmere appreciates the thought.

cashmere can feel moving and she assumes opalescence is taking a sip of tea. “i did,” she says. “he needed taking down a notch.”

luster looks at her quizzically. “takes a lot to get you that riled, opal,” he says. “what'd he do?”

“disrespected mags,” she says, and luster cocks an eyebrow. there's a long pause before opalescence speaks again. “called my games rigged.”

luster slams his hand on the table, and cashmere jumps. “you can get up now, cashmere dear,” opalescence says. “i know you're awake.”

cashmere pulls herself into something resembling an upright position. “how'd you know?” she asks.

opalescence smiles. “your breathing changed.” she takes a sip of tea. “luster, you were saying?”

“i’ll remind him that no matter what, you are still his elder, and he shouldn’t disrespect you like that,” luster says, face dark.

“i appreciate it, lu,” opalescence says, “but i think the knife in his shoulder should do that quite well.” luster chuckles. 

“if you say so, opal,” he says. he’s twirling a knife casually in between his fingers.

opalescence smiles at him. “i do,” she says, and then her smile twists; turns mischievous. “but if you think he needs a reminder, i'm not one to stop you.”

“i'll keep that in mind,” luster says, with a half-smirk on his face. not long after, cashmere falls asleep again, this time to opalescence stroking her hair with her too-long nails, trying not to dream about her brother.

//

the year after gloss wins, a boy from four wins, with shining sea-green eyes, and tawny brown skin, and the capitol loves him. 

gloss tells her, after a couple of drinks, that sometimes he daydreams about strangling the boy. 

“he’s the special one now, cas,” he says. “and me? i’m nothing. i don’t have assignments half as much as i used to.”

cashmere takes a sip of her drink and savors the liquor taste burning in her throat to keep from strangling gloss herself. she wishes she was replaced, that she didn’t spend two or three or four nights a week fucking the men (and occasionally women) snow sent her to. she hates them all. they don’t care about how many bruises she leaves with or how much walking might hurt the next day. “gloss, you’re special to me,” she says, tiredly.

he downs a shot and looks her in the eyes. she doesn’t know exactly what she sees in them — pain and loss, abandonment, desperation, but she knows it isn’t good. there’s a moment’s silence before he says, “you know that’s not enough.”

//

“i think you’re ready to mentor,” opalescence says one night, on their train back from the capitol after johanna mason from seven beheaded both the tributes from one that year.

“no i’m not,” cashmere says, almost automatically. mentoring was almost like being put out to pasture. it meant you weren’t worth anything anymore. “they still want me.”

opalescence looks at her. “cashmere,” she says. “you can do both. look at brutus. people still love him, and he mentored nero and petra. and a few others, besides. nero and petra are just the ones who won.”

cashmere frowns. “i don’t know — ” she begins, but before she can say anything, opalescence puts a bunch of folders down in front of her, and walks away. 

“take a look at those files,” opalescence says as she’s leaving, and cashmere sighs. opalescence always acts like she knows what’s best for cashmere, and cashmere’s tired of it. she’s not ready to mentor. she can barely keep herself up. she stumbles home after appointments and spends the night in clubs dancing and drinking until she doesn’t have to think about the fact that snow’s whoring her out to anyone who will pay him enough money. she’s not ready to take on a tribute. 

“i’m not looking at these!” cashmere yells, and her voice echoes through the train. opalescence says nothing in return.

cashmere sighs again before flipping open the files. she stops at one of them, the file for a girl named venus. she’s got soft sandy-blonde hair, and chocolate-brown eyes. she’s tiny, too, and stands a head shorter than cashmere, but she’s got the top scores in bow and arrow, close-quarters combat, and her intelligence scores are better than cashmere imagines her own probably were. the notes say she’s angry, overly-sensitive to criticism, and hates being alone. she’s hard to get to know, self-motivated, and incredibly hard on herself, and cashmere thinks that anyone else might ignore her, but she can’t. she sets venus’s file aside and sighs. she’s tired of opalescence being right.

//

“i’m venus. i’m told you’re my mentor?” cashmere looks up, and she recognizes venus from her photo. she’s standing in front of cashmere wearing a frilly bright blue number and picking at her fingernails. 

“that’s me,” cashmere says, switching her glass of raspberry alcoholic liquor to her other hand and putting out her hand for venus to shake. venus shakes her hand, and when cashmere pulls her hand away, she’s left with a smear of blood across her palm from where venus has torn at her cuticles until they bled. “and stop that. your prep team will throw a fit.”

something in venus’s face twists and becomes hard. “make me,” she says. cashmere blinks. she suddenly regrets agreeing to opalescence’s demands that she be a mentor. she knew she’d be bad at this. 

“okay,” cashmere says, and she can’t believe she’s agreed to this, but the second the word comes out of her mouth, venus lunges at her and rakes her fingernails down cashmere’s cheek before cashmere can push her off. cashmere pins venus’s hands above her head with one hand and grabs her knife from her bra and holds it against the girl’s throat. 

“i told you to stop that,” cashmere says, tone cool and voice low. “i’m your mentor. and you listen to me. got it?” venus hesitates for a moment, and cashmere presses the knife into venus’s neck, and a tiny drop of blood appears on the end of cashmere’s knife. venus nods her head, and cashmere pulls the knife away and collapses back into her chair. venus looks at cashmere and cashmere thinks that she can see a gleam of something like respect in her eyes.

//

cashmere watches the tributes rise into the arena from the mentor’s room with quartz next to her, watching his boy. the pedestals are all set on a rocky outcroppings. the cornucopia is in the center of the outcroppings, and behind the tributes, cashmere can see some sort of purple grass and rolling hills. it’s dark, with what looks like stormclouds rolling in. the tributes ready themselves and the moment the gong goes off, the rain starts. venus runs for the cornucopia, grabbing the bow and arrow and taking out two tributes before they’ve managed to move off their pedestals. cashmere can hear haymitch curse from across the room and knows that one of the kids must’ve been his. when the bloodbath is over, there’s ten kids dead, and venus has killed four of them. there’s something warm in cashmere’s chest that feels almost like pride.

//

the further from the cornucopia the tributes get, the colder it gets. the boy from district seven had learned that the hard way, after he made a run for it, and ended up with a reindeer mutt’s razor sharp horns in his throat.

the career pack sticks close to the cornucopia, leaving only to hunt for food and other tributes. the pack consists of venus, quartz’s boy silk, andromeda and milo from two, and both tributes from ten, angus and kit. there’s only weapons in the cornucopia, and the water from the few, shallow ponds around the arena was poison; leaving only the rain safe to drink. if the pack didn’t have the two from ten, cashmere knows, then they’d be fucked. career tributes don’t train for foraging food and water, leaving such things for tributes from the slaughterhouse districts. cashmere fucks sponsors to make sure she has enough money to get venus water or food. she’s not about to let that girl who crawled into cashmere’s bed at night because she refused to sleep alone die. not if she can help it. 

//

the first career tribute to fall is kit from ten to a pack of snake mutts that hiss and bite and create hallucinations and aches in any tribute that’s bitten. both of the kids from eleven had fallen prey to the snake mutts before the career pack had found them. venus shoots kit in the skull the moment she gets bitten.

the second career tribute to die is milo from two, who dies at the hands of the boy from nine. but while the boy had nine had run, expecting the careers’ anger and thirst for revenge, he hadn’t expected to find a flock of long-beaked birds waiting to tear him apart.

the third and fourth career tributes, silk and angus, die on the seventh day, during the fire the gamemakers start to drive the remaining tributes together. the fire leaves the arena burnt and blackened, and no amount of rain can put it out, leaving the arena with no food. 

unfortunately for the gamemakers, who’d probably set the fire with the intent of allowing a phantom victor, the fire killed every remaining tribute but venus and andromeda.

//

cashmere watches the final showdown with bated breath. “it’s just you and me, andy. it’s always been the two of us, you know. no one else ever had a chance,” venus says, taunting andromeda. andromeda towers over her, her dark hair streaking down her face in the rain that’s been pouring down since the games started. 

she growls and lunges at venus, screaming. “aw, vee, i didn’t know you were so fucking sentimental.”

venus jumps back, landing on her bad leg, the one that had caught on fire until she’d dove into one of the ponds. it crumples beneath her and she slides to the ground, her face betraying the pain it's causing her. “oh, trust me, andy, i’m not. it’s not as though i ever liked you.” 

andromeda takes a moment to reassess her surroundings. she scrambles up, effectively cornering venus, who is backed against the cornucopia. “you goddamn fucking _bitch_ ,” she says in a tone that is simultaneously filled with some kind of awe and condescension. she swings at venus again, and venus flinches out of the path of her fists, letting andromeda slam her fists into the soft gold of the cornucopia. when she pulls her fist back, her fingers are already starting to swell and there’s blood smearing across her knuckles. venus had lost her pack with its bow and arrow while running from the fire, so she has no weapons, but as venus scrambles backwards, she grabs a rock and she swings it at andromeda, catching her across the jaw. andromeda screams, stumbling and falling onto venus, and venus’s face hardens and cashmere watches as venus smashes the rock into andromeda’s skull, over and over and over until the boom of the cannon drowns out both of their screams. 

//

and then venus comes home, and cashmere sits by her bedside until venus wakes up and finds her leg almost good as new and her chest larger than she’d remembered and cashmere holds venus’s hand after she wakes up and vomits remembering what she’d done. cashmere’s never been prouder of anyone in her life, and she can’t help but wonder if this is how opalescence felt when she made it home. she suddenly realizes opalescence was right about her needing to mentor after all. she hates it.

//

gloss picks his first tribute to mentor during the seventy-fourth games. she’s a lot like cashmere herself, cashmere thinks, tall and blonde and pretty, and cashmere silently hopes she doesn’t make it out. her weapon of choice is a mace, and gloss tells her to go for something more delicate. the capitol doesn’t like to watch girls get their hands dirty. cashmere privately hopes the girl picks a mace during the games, and shows them what she can do. bites the hand that feeds her. reminds them how bloody and dirty and dangerous girls can be. 

in the end, the girl from twelve drops a tracker-jacker nest on the careers that takes two of them out, and she’d never tell gloss this but cashmere is the tiniest bit relieved that gloss’s girl was one of them. 

//

when they announce the twist of that year’s quarter quell, cashmere doesn’t know what to do. haven’t they been good? haven’t they been the pretty little fuckable pets the capitol wanted? haven’t they done enough? she gets drunk at luster’s house and curses out the capitol, snow, caesar, anyone she can think of. the new gamemaker. she met him at a party and she’d thought he was nice. hah.

opalescence has to drag her back to her own home in victor’s village. opalescence and venus sit at her bedside and venus watches cashmere with wide, scared eyes. cashmere screams into her pillow until she forgets how to breathe. 

//

“fancy seeing you here,” cashmere says with a smirk to brutus. “heard you were a volunteer.” they’re both waiting in line for the gauntlet, which paxton is currently attempting to run. he looks like he might vomit. cashmere thinks this is the first time she’s ever seen him even close to sober. enobaria is chatting with finnick a few people ahead of them.

“i heard the same about you,” she says, and brutus scratches his chin. 

“yeah,” he says. “flint got reaped again, the poor kid. at least i had a few good years outta the arena. what about you?”

“opalescence got reaped,” she shrugs, as though it’s no big deal. “and she’s my mentor, so of course i couldn’t let her go back in.” cashmere smiles brightly, twirling a knife between her fingers. “plus now gloss and i get the chance to kick your and enobaria’s asses.”

brutus laughs, a bright, booming laugh that’s so sudden it almost startles cashmere. “fat chance.”

//

cashmere throws knives at a target for her personal assessment. she doesn’t miss a single one. she gets a score of nine, and remembers the day that she threw a fit about a nine in training and almost laughs. she was so young, back then. she sighs, and opalescence pats her cheek, and venus is curled into cashmere’s side like a cat, (cashmere thinks it’s going to be so odd when she’s in the arena and venus isn’t. venus has been following cashmere like a shadow since she won her games), and they turn off the training scores and watch shitty capitol tv until cashmere almost forgets that soon she’s going to walk into an arena for the second time in her life. 

//

“cashmere fellona! it is my honor and my privilege to welcome you to the stage again,” caesar flickerman says. his hair is lavender, this year, which is a contrast to the sea-green color he had the year she won.

“it is my honor and privilege to be here,” cashmere purrs.

“so, cashmere,” caesar says. “can i ask how you’re feeling about going into the arena again?”

“well, caesar,” cashmere says, wiping away a mock-tear from her eye. “i just can’t stop thinking about how much you must be suffering.”

caesar makes an over-exaggerated frown. “me?”

“all of you,” cashmere says, gesturing towards the audience of capitol citizens. “you’re going to watch twenty-three victors die! twenty-three victors that you all know and love.”

caesar looks uncomfortable, and quickly switches the topic. “so, do you think you’ll be one of them?”

cashmere bites her lip, pretending to be in thought. “i certainly hope not, but i can’t say i’d be particularly sad if gloss was the one who lived, either.”

caesar clutches his heart and sighs. “so sweet! so thoughtful! i don’t know what we’re going to do without you.”

cashmere looks straight at the camera as she says, “neither do i.”

//

when they are raised up into the arena, all cashmere can see is water, and her heart catches in her throat. she resists the urge to vomit, and after a moment, she can see that it’s less like the swamp from her first games and more like an ocean. she curses quietly to herself. district four will do well this year. she can see the cornucopia on an island in front of her, and as soon as the gong goes off, she dives into the water, swimming to the cornucopia.

when she gets there, the girl from twelve is already there, and cashmere wants to marvel at how she even knows how to swim, anyway, but instead she grabs a set of throwing knives and chucks one straight at axel from district six, who is running on one of the spokes towards her. well. trying to run. she imagines the withdrawal must be slowing him down. it’s better to put him out of his misery now, she thinks. she didn’t have to justify her kills to herself the first time around, but she does now. when she’s known them all for years. when she’s gotten drunk with them or slept with them or been friendly with them. 

she spins around, ready to aim another knife at the person she can sense near her, and then holds herself back when enobaria flashes her a toothy smile. 

“your bro just knifed that district ten bitch,” she says. “brutus is going after cecelia and woof. he’ll make it quick. sent me to find you and scour the cornucopia.” cashmere nods. she's glad brutus will make it quick. cecelia has kids at home who don't need to watch her die dirty and woof’s old as dirt and killing him any other way wouldn't be fair. 

tossing enobaria another set of throwing knives. she can see seeder from eleven running up one of the spires and nods at enobaria. 

“heads up,” cashmere says, and enobaria burys a knife in seeder’s forehead. 

a few minutes later, the cannons begin, and there’s something about the sound of cannons makes cashmere feel at home. 

//

they’re in the jungle when it starts to rain, and cashmere’s so thirsty she tips her head back and opens her mouth and it’s at that moment gloss tackles her to the ground. 

“hey! what was that for?” she yells, dusting herself off. she looks up at him and there’s blood dripping down his forehead, and almost on autopilot, she licks her thumb and goes to wipe the blood off. 

there’s a blank expression on his face as he pushes her away. “it’s blood, cas.”

“what is?” enobaria demands from behind him. “the rain?” gloss nods, the same lost expression on his face. enobaria turns around and begins trying to signal to brutus, who’s deeper in the jungle, looking for water, that they have to get out. by the time he turns around, the rain is pelting down, and all cashmere can see is red. gloss wails, a kind of keening animal sound that she’s only heard before in dying mutts.

when the rain clears, gloss is rocking back and forth on the jungle floor. enobaria sighs. “what’s with him?” she moans, and cashmere shoots a glare at her. sure, she likes enobaria, they’ve gotten drunk together, had sex once or twice, but this is her brother and cashmere won’t stand for her insulting him. 

“there was blood rain in his games,” she says. enobaria shrugs, as if to say _how was i expected to know that?_. cashmere kneels down and looks into gloss’s eyes. “how’d you know what it was, glossy?” she asks, using a childhood nickname that she hasn’t used in years, not since the two of them entered the academy. 

“the air smelled like iron.”

//

they’re waiting at the edge of the jungle when they see the other alliance head for the cornucopia. they don’t speak, but quickly begin making their way to the cornucopia for an ambush. they’re outnumbered, but cashmere hopes the element of surprise will help. they’ve just made it to the cornucopia when gloss slits wiress’s neck, and in an instant, before the cannon, katniss turns to wiress and gloss, who is still holding her body up and fires an arrow into gloss’s heart, and gloss drops.

it’s then that the cannons boom.

cashmere wants to scream, wants to yell, to run to him but the cannon’s already boomed and she knows he’s gone, so instead, she runs towards katniss. maybe she can avenge him somehow and she’s just processed that her brother is gone and there’s some kind of deep gaping hole in her heart because she’s never known a world without him and there’s something in the back of her mind that’s maybe the tiniest bit relieved that she doesn’t have to kill him herself when she sees johanna mason’s axe headed towards her chest, and she has time only to think, _i’m sorry i couldn’t avenge you gloss i’m so sorry i love you_ —


End file.
